


Unidentifiable Falling Object

by Anonymous



Category: Hermitcraft RPF
Genre: Angst, Gen, Temporary Character Death, because of respawn and all, for reasons that are quickly made obvious, hey remember how bdubs fell for 2 years straight
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-08-19
Updated: 2020-08-19
Packaged: 2021-03-06 02:42:11
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,027
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25996189
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/
Summary: Constant deaths and respawns with no break in-between can add up over time. Bdubs has been falling and dying for 2 years now.
Comments: 4
Kudos: 114
Collections: Anonymous





	Unidentifiable Falling Object

They say that it isn’t the fall that kills you, but the sudden stop. At this point, Bdubs was so good at dying from sudden stops that he felt he could make a fair effort at figuring out ways to die from the fall too.

It’s all he ever does these days. The gasp of frigidly cold and thin air. The weightlessness, aloft and seemingly carried by the clouds. The ground’s slow swim into focus as, with a point of reference, he realizes just how fast he’s going. The panic (long dulled from a spike of fear into a sledge of dread) and then.

**< BDoubleO100 fell from a great height>**

And thus it started again. He didn’t even know where he was falling at this point. He had no desire to attempt to learn the lay of the land from a bird’s eye view. Well, a bird-whose-wings-spontaneously-broke’s eye view.

Everywhere was new. Unfamiliar and scary and he couldn’t even process those feelings amongst the constant falling falling falling. He couldn't even find a single landmark that he recognized. Sometimes he fell between tall buildings, obviously made by skilled builders. Sometimes he would make it to the ground and smash flat in the carefully paved streets. Other times he would catch on something on the way down and.

Yeah. He didn’t like to think of that. At least the death messages didn’t go into excruciating detail.

In the beginning, he attempted to remember everything he heard to survive falling. He tried the tuck and roll trick. He didn’t even know snapped necks registered as a distinct death message. He had all the time in the universe to try and perfect it, but somehow the inspiration to continue attempting died with the horrible crunch he heard the first time.

Sometimes he would fall into the tangle of redstone of some strange farm or another, and despite everything, he would feel a little bad at how much he probably messed up the system.

Sometimes he would fall in the wilderness. Most of the time, actually. Deserts, mesas, forests... if a player fell in the woods and nobody was alive to hear the snap of bone, did he make a sound?

**< BDoubleO100 fell from a great height>**

Sometimes, less likely than he expected, he would fall into an ocean. Water was always great for fall damage reduction but they never tell you how it forces the air out of your lungs. How deep you go down, sinking into blue and green. They never tell you the disorientation you’re feeling, how the bubbles you created surround you like a smokescreen and you can’t tell what ways up and.

**< BDoubleO100 drowned>**

They also don’t tell you the burning rasp of salt that remains in your throat and lungs when you respawn. The attempts at coughs that are aborted half-way when no oxygen can get in, the air’s just moving too fast.

The exhaustion of respawning has just merged into a blur at this point. Bdubs imagines it as a sort of grey mass, slowly spreading over him and choking him out. It’s so hard to think at all when every moment he would.

**< BDoubleO100 fell from a great height>**

He would like to think that the flashes of people he sometimes sees those nanoseconds before beginning again from the edge of the stratosphere are his fellow hermits, and they are trying to save him somehow, but the truth is. He can’t physically care anymore. Any fight has drained from him. He just falls now. That’s all he is.

He wants to sleep. So many nights go past, and he can barely fear the phantoms he sometimes passes by when he knows that his brain isn’t awake enough to even register as exhausted to those undead mobs. But the nights go by and he is alone. Falling.

**< BDoubleO100 fell from a great height>**

He’s stopped even attempting to swim when he falls in water. That’s why, this time, when he crashes into what... a lake?... he just lets himself sink down. The dancing of sunlight on the surface of the water entrances him, and honestly even with water beginning to enter his lungs he can’t be bothered to care. He can already feel the strands of kelp wrap around him, like the embrace of the vines from... from…

A shadow appears in the light, fading though it was from lack of oxygen. Then a crash of bubbles, and something dark darts towards him. He is grabbed, and abruptly towed up, up. No longer falling. What a thought.

He breaches the surface of the water, and some starved part of his hindbrain finally wakes up enough to prod him to hack a cough and suck in a deep breath. He can feel himself being dragged across some rough ground, further away from the water, and his back being slapped strongly. A rush of water dislodges itself from his lungs with a great sputter.

His ears, long since adjusted to the constant white noise of rushing air, felt painful in its absence, and he couldn’t quite focus on the person above him, looking at him with great big eyes and a worried expression.

Eventually, words started to make sense. “Bubbles?” The person above him was repeating, wavering in and out of the fog that clogged his vision. “Are you ok?”

He tried to say something of his own. The most intelligent thing he managed was “hey.”

He was no longer falling. He was... The thoughts couldn't even come to him, so foreign were the concepts of 'safety.'

That’s... uh... Keralis. Yea. He... recognized that name. His brain was still full of fast-blowing wind so he couldn’t do much more than attempt to hold onto that thought. He gave another “hey” to test the shape it made in his throat. When had he last spoken before this, his throat long since made ragged from the screams?

Keralis was talking again, but the ringing in his ears has outpaced his friend's soft voice, and he closed his eyes as blobby clumps of darkness began to collect around the edges of his vision.

He just wanted to sleep now.


End file.
